Janie and I hit the streets early, just to see if we could pick up some decent early morning photos of St. John's. We really wanted to capture some of the colors that work so well in the "Jelly Bean Row" houses that uniquely say St. John's. Of note, after researching the coloring of the homes and their history, I stumbled on an article titled "Jellybean Row Houses" by Geoff Meeker (March 2012) which tells that this practice of brightly colored painting began in 1977, with a demonstration project that consisted of painting a sample block in bright colours. It caught on, and grew to today's "most colorful city".

So, after securing a sampling of photos, as well as snagging a full tank of gas and a quick bite for all hands, we made a clean getaway from the city. Thursday geared up as a bit of a road day. We had several options as far as routes to our destination, Terra Nova National Park. We settled on driving the rural highways that included the attractions we wanted to see.

In essence we left St. John's and passed through the many communities which dot Conception and Trinity Bays. Gorgeous drive on a slightly overcast, breezy morning. Nicely, the traffic was headed into St. John's so we were headed in the perfect direction. Scenic lookouts and community wharves were the mainstay. The terrain is hilly and rugged, sometimes with huge rocky outcrops that tower over inlets and harbours. Highway condition, overall, was pretty decent and I think I only clanked on one real bump the entire drive.

This is another aside, but I have to mention that Newfoundlanders sure had fun when they named communities. I found this marketing clip/TV Ad (Newfoundland Place Names) which catches some of the qualities in these names. On this day we drove through Paradise, Cupids, Harbour Grace, Heart's Content, Dildo, Come By Chance... Perhaps the Irish sense of fun and wit coming to the fore. Regardless, Newfoundland must have some of the most unique place names of anywhere in Canada.

We selected this route purposefully. We stopped for an hour or so at the Heart's Content Cable Station Provincial Historic Site. This site has very much in common with our home town Canso. Heart's Content, like Canso and Hazel Hill, was the site of transatlantic cable landings and maintained a station used to relay messages from across the Atlantic. Nicely, the building in Heart's Content has been preserved and it seems with an important percentage of the actual equipment. Fine visit!

We continued around the peninsula to link up with the TCH and motor off to our evening campground, Terra Nova National Park. We had reserved a campsite in the Newman Sound Campground, which was easily found only minutes from the highway (which traverses through the Terra Nova). As it goes, the campground was quite empty, and we really had no neighbours in any direction. So we set up, hoping that earlier predictions of thunderstorms would pass without too much incident. Monica assured us the weather would be suitable!!!

Indeed, Terra Nova proved a great stop... We took the opportunity to hike part of the campground's perimeter trail, use the Internet Cafe, shop at the market and enjoyed the great shower houses just a short walk from our tent site. We even found mosquito coils, to go with the "Moose Juice" and "Jelly Bean Row" red wines we had purchased, and all gleefully burned well into the evening. All in all, excellent night (except for one deflating air mattress which was quickly decommisioned the next morning to the park recycle bin). And best of all... Nothing more than a brief mist in regards to precipitation, with the tent screens down.